Last night I stayed up late, to take advantage of Priority Booking for reserving tickets for the Three Choirs Festival, billed as “the world’s finest choral music.” The booking office opened at 10:00 am in Gloucester, UK, which is 11:00 pm in Hawaii. I logged onto my computer at 10:55 pm and didn’t finish booking the tickets until about 11:40 pm.

According to the brochure, “The Three Choirs Festival is a week-long programme of world-class music making, featuring choral and orchestral concerts, solo and chamber music recitals, talks, cathedral services, theatre, exhibitions, and walks, rotating each summer between the beautiful English cathedral cities of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester. One of the elements which makes the festival so special is the Festival Chorus, which is made up of auditioned singers from the local area trained by professional directors, meaning that the Chorus both sings to a high standard and is a real part of the community. Three Choirs is thought to be the longest-standing classical music festival in the world and celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2015.”

This year the Festival will be held in Gloucester, the largest of the three cathedrals, and the best, in my opinion, in terms of acoustics. The dates are July 22-29, 2023 and will mark my fifth Three Choirs Festival, my first since the pandemic.

One of the highlights for me are the choral evensongs when the choirs of the three cathedrals unite to present both traditional and new repertoire. It was the experience of hearing evensong in these marvelous acoustics to cause Rich Arenschieldt, the president of the American Friends of the Three Choirs Festival, to exclaim that he “had died and gone to heaven!” He has attended this festival for more than 25 years.

Here’s what I wrote in 2016 about the extraordinary acoustics of Gloucester Cathedral: I mentioned the fan-vaulted ceiling and how it encourages the sound to grow. I was speaking to another concertgoer tonight and she said she had heard the Philharmonia orchestra, which is performing all week here, in a concert hall venue and they sounded different from the way they are sounding in Gloucester Cathedral. The sound of the orchestra and choir is absolutely fantastic in these Cathedral acoustics—which definitely has more reverberation than the typical concert hall. The reverberant acoustics provide a wonderful “cushion” on which to make music.

I’m happy to say that I won’t be going to Three Choirs by myself! Last night I also booked tickets for my friends Joan Ishibashi (who has come with me twice before) and Bill Potter, who came on my Santiago de Compostela trip last fall. I actually booked a two bedroom, two bath waterfront condo last June because hotels are often sold out more than a year in advance of the Festival.

Interesting that it was this photo which came up when I did a search of the Gloucester photos in my phone, since it was only two days ago that I played a second performance of the Fauré “Requiem” at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Kailua under Tim Carney’s direction. Acoustically the building is vastly different from the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, and is much more “dry.” I used the word “unforgiving,” when describing the difference in acoustics to my page turner, Janet Sharp, who was good enough to travel all the way from Mililani to turn pages for me in both Honolulu and in Kailua.

I first came to St. John’s Lutheran decades ago when for some reason, my husband, son and I came to a worship service. My son Stephen was in the first grade at Aikahi Elementary School, and we were so surprised to see his first grade teacher playing in the handbell choir there! After the service we went up to greet her, Mrs. Pauline Jacroux, and she said she knew us already, because she was the daughter of Bernhard Hormann from the Lutheran Church of Honolulu! See the whole history of the Hormann family here. Now it was all coming clear … why our son’s first grade teacher (in a public school!) had written us comments on his homework on Lutheran stationery!

I came twice to practice and register the Allen digital organ at St. John’s but I never had a rehearsal in this space with the orchestra and choir so I didn’t know if the registrations I had chosen would be in balance. I did experience some glare from the acrylic music rack when I tried to watch the conductor.

Because of the drier acoustics and the much lower ceiling, the concert felt very different from the one we had given a week earlier at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. It seemed more informal and family-friendly … there were several children in the audience, in particular, a young boy who sat in the front row near the harpist, Sharene Lum Taba, who mimicked plucking the strings of the harp as she played the concert. It was so cute! Later I talked to his mother, who said her son was taking piano lessons from the mezzo-soprano soloist, Sarah Lambert Connelly.

Thanks, Tim, for asking me to play! I’ll be happy to enjoy OTHER people’s hard work at the Three Choirs Festival this July.